SOS Children’s Villages UK needed a complete overhaul of its digital tracking infrastructure. We consolidated its GTM setup, implemented consent-compliant server-side tracking, and replaced a limited donation event with full GA4 ecommerce measurement, giving the organisation a reliable, privacy-conscious foundation for its digital fundraising.
“Working with Jason was great; he was incredibly competent and thorough, and made a really complex setup feel manageable. We can finally trust our data and clearly see what’s driving our fundraising forward. It’s given us real confidence to grow our impact.”
Victoria Rugg, Head of Communications & Digital, SOS Children’s Villages UK
Opportunity
SOS Children’s Villages UK is the UK branch of the world’s largest global children’s charity, dedicated to protecting children who have been separated from their families or are at risk of neglect or abuse.
Like many charities operating without a dedicated in-house technical resource, SOSUK’s tracking setup had evolved organically over time, shaped by the tools and integrations added by different teams and third-party partners as needs arose.
The result was a fragmented infrastructure that was holding back campaign performance and introducing risk. A full audit and rebuild was the right next step.
Challenge
Our audit found a picture that will be familiar to anyone who has looked under the bonnet of a growing charity’s digital setup:
Tracking scripts had accumulated across both the main website and the GoDonate donation platform, applied directly rather than through a managed container.
The consent management platform was not integrated with Google Consent Mode, meaning the consent signals it collected were not being passed through to the tag layer.
A Google Analytics Site Kit installation on the main site was operating alongside the Google Tag Manager (GTM) setup, creating a risk of double-counting in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Donations were recorded as a basic custom event with no e-commerce data attached, so campaign platforms had no visibility of donation value.
GoDonate ran its own Meta Conversion API (CAPI) integration independently of consent and without deduplication logic.
And without cross-domain tracking in place, the user journey from the main site through to donation appeared broken in analytics.
None of these issues were unusual. Fixing them properly required the right expertise and a coordinated approach across multiple third-party systems.
Solution
We rebuilt SOSUK’s tracking setup end-to-end, with everything governed through a single, consolidated GTM container.
Consent Mode v2 and CookieYes Integration - We integrated CookieYes with Google Consent Mode v2, configured as default-denied, and mapped consent signals into GTM to ensure all tags fire in line with user choices. This brought the organisation into compliance and, through modelled conversions, preserved a meaningful proportion of attribution data even from users who decline consent.
Hardcoded Script Removal and GTM Migration - All hardcoded tracking scripts were migrated into GTM on both the main site and GoDonate, including the Meta Pixel, Google Ads, and TVSquared. The Site Kit GA4 reference was removed from the main site. All tags now sit within a single governed container, with consent gating applied consistently across every tag.
GA4 Ecommerce Donation Tracking - We replaced the existing custom donation_complete event with a properly structured GA4 purchase event, passing full ecommerce data including donation value, currency, and transaction ID. For the first time, SOSUK’s campaigns can optimise toward actual donation value rather than a binary conversion signal.
Cross-Domain Tracking - We configured cross-domain measurement between the main SOSUK website and GoDonate, ensuring the donation journey is tracked as a single continuous session rather than appearing as two separate visits.
Server-Side Tracking via Stape - We set up a Stape server container, with Meta CAPI and Google server-side forwarding both configured with consent-aware event forwarding and client-side deduplication. The GoDonate Meta CAPI integration was decommissioned and replaced entirely by the new server-side setup.
Results
SOSUK now has a tracking infrastructure that is accurate, compliant, and built to last. Key outcomes include:
Full ecommerce data available in GA4, Google Ads, and Meta for the first time, enabling value-based campaign optimisation.
A consent-compliant setup that respects user choices while maximising recoverable attribution through Consent Mode modelling.
A single, well-governed GTM container replacing a fragmented mix of hardcoded scripts and unmanaged integrations.
Server-side Meta CAPI providing stronger event matching and resilience against browser-side signal loss.
A documented, maintainable setup with handover notes, ready for the internal team to build on.